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Two persons are reported to have died after taking the A/H1N1 vaccination as the Chinese mainland prepares to vaccinate 65 million people, or 5 percent of its population, by the end of the year, health officials said on Friday. A secondary school teacher in Hunan province died while playing basketball 8 hours after taking the jab, the provincial health department said on Friday afternoon. But his death, according to preliminary findings, was not linked to the vaccine and it would not affect the ongoing H1N1 vaccination program, said Deng Haihua, spokesman for the Ministry of Health. Deng did not give...

President Obama called the 22-year ban on travel and immigration by HIV-positive individuals a decision "rooted in fear rather than fact" and announced the end of the rule-making process overturning the ban. The president signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 at the White House Friday and also spoke of the new rules, which have been under development more more than a year. "We are finishing the job," the president said. The regulations are the final procedural step in ending the ban, and will be published Monday in the Federal Register, to be followed by the standard...

If the flu pandemic becomes as severe as some experts fear, it could end up infecting the Internet. That's the conclusion of the General Accountability Office, which issued a report this week that warned about a potential meltdown of the Web. If the H1N1 flu strain spreads widely enough, keeping millions of workers and students confined to their homes, the Internet's infrastructure could be overwhelmed by people logging in from home. That surge in telecommuting, the report concluded, could slow down local networks to the point of gridlock. According to the Department of Homeland Security, "increased demand during a severe...

Just a week after it emerged that the German armed forces was getting a different kind of A/H1N1 vaccine to the general population, Der Spiegel magazine reports that the government will also get special treatment. The general population will be offered the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine, called Pandemrix, which contains a new booster element, or adjuvant, as well as a preservative containing mercury. Controversy has grown around the rapid licensing of the GSK vaccine – and a similar one being made by Novartis. Critics said not enough testing had been conducted before European licensing authorities rushed an approval. Chancellor Angela Merkel, her...

Don't Do This!!!

ATLANTA – The swine flu virus that has frightened the world is beginning to look a little less ominous. New York City officials reported Friday that the swine flu still has not spread beyond a few schools. In Mexico, very few relatives of flu victims seem to have caught the virus. One flu expert says there's no reason to believe the new virus is a more serious strain than seasonal flu. And a federal health official said the new flu virus doesn't appear to have genes that made the 1918 pandemic flu strain so deadly. ...

It's a confounding question on the lips of disease detectives: Why have the only deaths from the swine flu outbreak happened in Mexico? Investigators also want to know why the disease has killed young adults, who should have the greatest resistance. "They're good questions that we're asking, too," said Von Roebuck, spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We're still young in this investigation and we're still trying to understand exposure in this country as well as exposure in Mexico." Mexico has reported 152 fatalities in flu-like cases in recent days, seven of which have been confirmed...

An Associated Press story dated April 28 takes swine flu fears to a whole other level. A report datelined Washington by Ricardo Alonsozaldivar and Eileen Sullivan examined the worst-case scenario "if the swine flu gets out of control." "Two million dead," Alonsozaldivar and Sullivan wrote. "Hospitals overwhelmed. Schools closed. Swaths of empty seats at baseball stadiums and houses of worship. An economic recovery snuffed out. We're nowhere close to what government planners say would be a worst-case scenario: a global flu pandemic. But government leaders at all levels, and major employers, have spent nearly four years planning for one in...

The swine flu story has captured the news cycle for three days and counting now and that's perpetuating the hysteria, according to Fox News Channel's Brit Hume. Hume appeared on the FNC's "The Live Desk with Trace Gallagher" April 27 and blasted the media in general for hyping the swine flu story 24/7. "I realize it's been a slow weekend in terms of news," Hume said. "The president went out and played golf on Sunday. The White House reporters don't have much to work with today, so they're trying to get a piece of this swine flu story, which you...